Daily Archives: 1 December 2008

India and Pakistan may only just have begun rattling their sabres in the aftermath of the terror attack on Bombay, but a fullblown war has already broken out between the media of the two countries over the Indian media’s “unquestioning acceptance” of the Indian government’s “unsubstantiated” claim of a Pakistani link.

Nirupama Subramanian reports in The Hindu that the Indian media is being decried as “too nationalistic” and “smug”, and that they purveyed “lies” and “half-truths”. While governments that governments will say what they have to, the Indian media, especially the electronic media, is projecting Pakistan as the enemy without asking the requisite questions.

“[The] Indian media is overcommitted to projecting India as a success story. They are not used to reporting State failures. They are used to reporting India as a country where nothing bad happens, its Army as the best thing in the world. It projects its heroes as supermen, taller than the Himlayas…So the gap between what the Indian media are committed to reporting, and the crass state failure they had to do report [in Bombay], they ended up filling it with lies,” Talat Hussain, a top-rated anchor with Aaj TV, told Dawn News.

Subramanian reports that the feeling is widespread in the Pakistan journalistic community that the Indian media are responsible for the current tensions between the two countries and for pushing the Indian government to take on its neighbour even if it means launching a military strike.